Up to a quarter of home care workers could be lost to mandatory vaccine rules, warns survey

Up to a quarter of the home care workers will be made to look for other jobs if Covid-19 vaccination becomes mandatory, a new survey reveals.

A six-week consultation was launched on 9 September to decide whether Covid and flu vaccinations should be made compulsory for home care workers and the NHS workforce, but according to the latest survey published by the Homecare Association, it reveals almost a quarter of home care providers thought they would lose over 25 per cent of their staff, “creating a risk” that home care will not be available for “tens of thousands of older and disabled people” who need support in their own home.

The survey also reported around a third of providers would expect to lose under 10 per cent of their workforce, while 40 per cent reported that they would lose between 10 and 24 per cent of their staff. Over 90 per cent thought it was certain or likely that recruitment will become harder if this comes into force and over 80 per cent thought they would need to dismiss staff as a result.

Dr Jane Townson, chief executive of the Homecare Association said: “While progress is being made where currently 83.2 per cent of home care workers have had the first dose of vaccine, and 73.7 per cent the second dose.

“We understand people who use services, and their families expect care workers to be vaccinated. Vaccination is also desirable to help protect the health and safety of care workers themselves.

“The Homecare Association strongly supports vaccination of the homecare workforce and we lobbied hard, right from the beginning, to ensure it was as easy as possible for home care workers to access vaccinations.”

'Our belief is persuasion will be more effective than compulsion'

Responses were received from 150 homecare providers across all regions of England, who provide care to 27,000 people and employ 33,500 staff. All regions of England were represented (except the South West), with the North West, East of England and London strongly represented.

In a previous survey conducted by the Homecare Association, over three-quarters of providers said that recruitment was the “hardest it has ever been”. Many have experienced a 75 per cent reduction in job applications since January 2021.

During the first phase of Covid-19, when there was inadequate PPE, no routine testing and no vaccines, “home care workers kept people safe and deaths from Covid-19 of people at home were very much lower than those in care homes,” says Dr Townson.

“Data suggest vaccinated people may be able to spread the delta variant of Covid-19 as readily as unvaccinated people. Care workers have thus continued to follow guidelines on PPE, regular testing, ventilation, cleaning and other IPC measures.

“We feel it's very important to balance the mitigated risk of infection with the risk of unavailability of care at home for highly dependent older and disabled people.

“Vaccination is a key line of defence against serious illness but was only ever part of a wider set of infection prevention and control measures. “Our belief is that persuasion will be more effective than compulsion at encouraging vaccination of those with genuine fears, without losing vital workforce capacity.”

The government recently consulted on making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for care home staff. To protect care home residents, workers will now need to be double jabbed as a condition of deployment in CQC-regulated care homes in England by 11 November, unless exempt.

The consultation ‘Making vaccination a condition of deployment in the health and wider social care sector’ ended 22 October.